ent or dissent unto
such things as pass, to stay there in the name of the city or borough for
which they are appointed.

In this place also are our merchants to be installed as amongst the
citizens (although they often change estate with gentlemen, as gentlemen
do with them, by a mutual conversion of the one into the other), whose
number is so increased in these our days that their only maintenance is
the cause of the exceeding prices of foreign wares, which otherwise, when
every nation was permitted to bring in her own commodities, were far
better, cheaper, and more plentifully to be had. Of the want of our
commodities here at home, by their great transportation of them into other
countries, I speak not, sith the matter will easily betray itself. Certes
among the Lacedaemonians it was found out that great numbers of merchants
were nothing to the furtherance of the state of the commonwealth:
wherefore it is to be wished that the huge heap of them were somewhat
restrained, as also of our lawyers, so should the rest live more easily
upon their own, and few honest chapmen be brought to decay by breaking of
the bankrupt. I do not deny but that the navy of the land is in part
maintained by their traffic, and so are the high prices of wares kept up,
now they have gotten the only sale of things upon pretence of better
furtherance of the commonwealth into their own hands: whereas in times
past, when the strange bottoms were suffered to come in, we had sugar for
fourpence the pound, that now at the writing of this Treatise is well
worth half-a-crown; raisins or currants for a penny that now are holden at
sixpence, and sometimes at eightpence and tenpence the pound; nutmegs at
twopence halfpenny the ounce, ginger at a penny an ounce, prunes at
halfpenny farthing, great raisins three pounds for a penny, cinnamon at
fourpence the ounce, cloves at twopence, and pepper at twelve and sixteen
pence the pound. Whereby we may see the sequel of things not always, but
very seldom, to be such as is pretended in the beginning. The wares that
they carry out of the realm are for the most part broad clothes and
carsies[64] of all colours, likewise cottons, friezes, rugs, tin, wool,
our best beer, baize, bustian, mockadoes (tufted and plain), rash, lead,
fells, etc.: which, being shipped at sundry ports of our coasts, are borne
from thence into all quarters of the world, and there either exchanged for
other wares or ready money, to the great gain